A longbet was made: the first true interstellar mission, targeted at the closest star to the Sun or even farther, will be launched before or on 6 December 2025, and will be widely supported by the public.

One of the mission specs was a flight time of 2000 years or less to the star of choice. Assuming this is Proxima Centauri simply because of its, well, proximity, we arrive at a minimum average mission velocity of about 650 kilometers per second. That can be compared to Voyager 1’s 17.1 km/s to get an idea of the upgrade in velocity needed, but as we’ve noted in these pages before, the right kind of sail employing a Sun-diver maneuver might get at least close to that speed.

Useful data along the way? Tibor names the targets of opportunity: A craft traveling at 650 km/s gets out to the Kuiper Belt in about a year and reaches the heliosheath at 100 AU. Year two takes it out of the heliosphere entirely, while years five to ten are of note because they take us to the distance of the Sun’s gravitational focus, where Sol acts as a unique lens to magnify distant starlight. Recall that unlike optical lenses (where the light diverges after the focus), a gravitational lens has a focal line that extends to infinity. In other words, separations greater than 550 AU (where the gravitational lensing effect is first available) still offer unique observational possibilities.

Beyond 550 AU, the electromagnetic radiation from the occulted object under study is amplified by a factor of 10**8 (100 million times). The ’spot radius’ (distance from the centre line of the image at which the image intensity gain falls by a factor of 4) has been calculated…to be about 11 km for a Sun-spacecraft separation of 2,200 AU.

Somewhere around year 20 of the Pacher probe’s mission it reaches the Oort Cloud, an area of obvious interest that may, in fact, extend halfway to the target star. We might also mention the Pioneer anomaly, for an outbound Proxima Centauri probe can obviously be studied in terms of anomalous acceleration along its route. Two thousand years after launch, the probe reaches the Proxima Centauri system, but for those who object that surely faster probes would have passed it along the way, I can only agree with Tibor that such a probe would get much done along its route before that happens, given a properly configured mission.

SpaceX and Orbital Sciences got a NASA contract for $3.5 billion to deliver stuff to the International Space Station. SpaceX’s share, totaling $1.6 B to start, covered 12 missions, while Orbital, which got an additional $300 million, was responsible for eight.

Elon: The difference is bigger than even the number of launches because our Dragon spacecraft has 50 percent more payload capability than Orbital. It’s actually, if you were to multiple it out, it’s as if we were doing 18 launches and they were doing eight launches.

MIT recommends that the International Space Station should be used by the U.S. and its international partners through 2020 to support human spaceflight to Mars. The Bush Vision of Moon exploration should be clarified and expanded so that it is “more, and not less ambitious.”

Novacem's cement, based on magnesium silicates, not only requires much less heating, it also absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens, making it carbon negative. Set up by Vlasopoulos and his colleagues at Imperial College London, Novacem has already attracted the attention of major construction companies such as Rio Tinto Minerals, WSP Group and Laing O'Rourke, and investors including the Carbon Trust.

The company has just started a £1.5m project funded by the government-backed Technology Strategy Board to build a pilot plant. If all goes well, Vlasopoulos expects to have Novacem products on the market within five years.

Vlasopoulos responded that magnesium silicates are abundant worldwide, with 10,000 billion tonnes available, according to some estimates. "In addition, the production process of our cement is of a chemical nature, which means it can also utilise various industrial byproducts containing magnesium in its composition." He is confident the material will be strong enough for use in buildings but acknowledged that getting licenses to use it will take several years of testing.

Standard cement, also known as Portland cement, is made by heating limestone or clay to around 1,500C. The processing of the ingredients releases 0.8 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement. When it is eventually mixed with water for use in a building, each tonne of cement can absorb up to 0.4 tonnes of CO2, but that still leaves an overall carbon footprint per tonne of 0.4 tonnes.

Novacem's cement, which has a patent pending on it, uses magnesium silicates which emit no CO2 when heated. Its production process also runs at much lower temperatures - around 650C. This leads to total CO2 emissions of up to 0.5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement produced. But the Novacem cement formula absorb far more CO2 as it hardens - about 1.1 tonnes. So the overall carbon footprint is negative - ie the cement removes 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne used.

0.6 tonnes times 10 trillion tons is 6 trillion tons. The amount of CO2 generated by people is 27 billion tons worldwide and this could increase to 45 billion tons. So 6 trillion tons is about 200 years worth of CO2 storage.

The expectations from nutrigenomics science are substantial. An important promise of nutrigenomics stems from its strong focus on public health and prevention/modification of “pre-disease phenotypes” in apparently healthy individuals. This coincides with a recent shift in emphasis in the biosciences toward treatment of future disease susceptibilities (i.e., preemptive medicine) rather than alleviation of established disease (Ozdemir and Godard, 2007b; Rose, 2006). Thus, in contrast to previous applications of genomics technologies where the goal is to distinguish existing disease from absence of disease, nutrigenomics aims to discern nuanced differences in predisease states such that personalized dietary interventions can be designed to prevent or modify future disease susceptibility.

Knowledge comes first, then its use. Science yields engineering. Already there seems no fundamental reason why we cannot live to 150 years or longer. After all, nature has done quite well on her own. We know of a 4,800-year-old bristlecone pine, a 400 year old clam—plus whales, a tortoise and koi fish over 200 years old—all without technology. After all, these organisms use pathways we share, and can now understand.

It will take decades to find the many ways of acting on the longevity genes we already know. Nature spent several billion years developing these pathways; we must plumb them with smart modern tools. The technology emerging now acts on these basic pathways to immediately effect all types of organs. Traditionally, medicine focuses on disease by isolating and studying organs. Fair enough, for then. Now it is better to focus on entire organisms. Only genomics can do this. It looks at the entire picture.

Quite soon, simple pills containing designer supplements will target our most common disorders — cardiovascular, diabetes, neurological. Beyond that, the era of affordable, personal genomics makes possible designer supplements, now called neutrigenomics. Tailored to each personal genome, these can enforce the repair mechanisms and augmentations that nature herself provided to the genomically fortunate.

Using our 100 proprietary longevity gene pathways, combined with the public data on human gene dysfunction associated with age-related disease, we have identified Designer Therapeutics for the genetic pathways controlling aging. In selecting compounds to test, we search the published literature for compounds that act on one or more of our proprietary genetic pathways of aging. Genescient has sophisticated software that cross links gene function in Drosophila with possible human therapeutics for age-related diseases. Drosophila is an excellent model system of aging and age-related disease that has many genetic pathways that are highly conserved in humans. Therefore, therapeutic substances that act on genetic pathways in Drosophila often work similarly in humans.

The speed and efficacy of our Drosophila testing allows us to test various combinations of compounds to acquire a highly synergistic set of compounds that act through differing aging pathways. This adds greatly to the therapeutic efficacy of the final treatment. Slowing the aging process requires several compounds, acting on several genetic pathways simultaneously. Our screening procedure allows us to identify quickly the best combinations of compounds that can act simultaneously on multiple genetic networks (cardiovascular, metabolic, neurological, etc).

When we find a multipath set of therapeutic compounds, we then do final nutrigenomic testing in humans. We establish dosage levels by prior literature data and our own testing. Once a group of 3 to 4 nutrigenomic compounds has been identified as synergistic in Drosophila, we can evaluate therapeutic efficacy of the nutrigenomic combination in humans using clinical tests such as: athletic performance, cognitive performance, lung capacity, skin elasticity, blood lipids, serum glucose, as well as inflammatory markers like CRP and IL-6. For any particular age-related disease, our proprietary therapeutic compounds could also be tested in specific disease mouse models or in human clinical trials.

Genescient’s Designer Therapeutics fine tune the body’s gene expression to mimic genetically selected longevity and reduced all cause mortality. This approach is in marked contrast to competing Pharma and biotech companies that focus on a single age-related disease or disorder. Genescient is the first company to develop genetic Designer Therapeutics to delay aging and the age-related diseases.

Our assessment is that diamondoid mechanosynthesis (DMS), including highly-parallelized atomically-precise diamondoid fabrication, is the quickest currently feasible route to a mature molecular nanotechnology, including nanofactories.

We do not think that DMS is a “necessary first step” for molecular manufacturing, and we wish the best of luck to those pursuing other paths. However, we do think DMS is a highly desirable first step, since it offers a much faster route to mature nanosystems than competing approaches. We disagree with the statement that “diamond synthesis seems almost irrelevant to progress toward advanced nanosystems.” We have a favorable view of the feasibility of the direct-to-DMS approach – a favorable view supported by hundreds of pages of detailed analysis in recently-published peer-reviewed technical journal papers and by gradually-evolving mainstream opinion.

-are bad -seem absurd to most scientists -are inconsistent with my ideas and publications -are nonetheless widely attributed to me I really dislike ideas like these, and all the more so when the ideas have spawned a jumble of misconceptions that impede progress. Some ideas about diamond synthesis are are in this category.

The Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is also developing a $10-million modular protective system that it claims in a promotional video is made from material "10 times stronger than concrete." The system would allow soldiers to construct temporary structures or reinforce existing ones with walls consisting of a double layer of armored panels held together by a collapsible frame.

If the six-month project is a success, the technology could also be used in the U.S. "Uddin said that while this next phase of his fiber-composite research is taking place overseas, the technology, if it proves viable, will have tangible benefits for the coastal regions of United States, including parts of Alabama. 'The potential payoff of this program could be the rapid insertion of the tree-fiber technology into the rebuilding and future construction of homes in the Gulf Coast states, especially in flood and storm prone areas like Mobile and New Orleans,' Uddin said."

Recently there was a simulated test in which the equivalent of a 15-foot piece of wood traveling at 130 miles per hour hit the less than 6-inch-thick SIP. The object barely made a dent on impact."

A blast-wave overpressure of 5 pounds per square inch, which is associated with winds around 150 miles per hour, is enough to destroy wood-frame buildings and cause severe damage to brick apartment buildings. However, with simple and cheap construction improvements and retrofits it is possible to enable all wood-frame buildings to survive 5 PSI. Further construction improvements can increase the survivability of buildings and the people inside them.

The bottom section of the HurriQuake nail is circled with angled barbs that resist pulling out in wind gusts up to 170 mph. This "ring shank" stops halway up to leave the middle of the nail, which endures the most punishment during an earthquake, at its maximum thickness and strength. The blade-like facets of the nail's twisted-top -- the spiral shank -- keeps planks from wobbling, which weakens a joint. The HurriQuake's head is also 25 percent larger than average to better resist counter-sinking and pulling through.

If every building could survive 5PSI then there would be no building failures for category 5 hurricanes or less and potentially no deaths outside the 5PSI radius of a nuclear blast for anyone inside a building. This would reduce the casualties from a nuclear bomb by half or more.

There is a new method of handling wood fibers so that cellulose fibres are undamaged. The mechanical tests shows undamaged cellulose paper has a tensile strength of 214 megapascals, making it stronger than cast iron (130 MPa) and almost as strong as structural steel (250 MPa). This would be a cheap way to increase the strength of construction material and further reduce the fatal blast radius. If cellustic fiber provided inexpensive reinforcement up to 20PSI, then the fatal blast radius for those inside buildings could be reduced to 35%. This would be five times lower fatal area or only 20% of the casualties.

As the technology becomes available and affordable continue to increase higher levels of robustness.

Level 1: Hurriquake nails and other cheap adjustments that are widely available now and in use for some new construction. Expect to get to 2-5 PSI and up to 10-15 resistant houses. Also need treatments for improved fire resistance. 50-70% casualty reduction.

Level 2: Use cellustic fiber that is almost up to the strength of steel (nanopaper made from wood), more steel framed construction, better concrete or carbon fiber, or graphene reinforcement. Stronger windows, doors OR monolithic domes for some new construction. Resistant PSI 10-25+. 60-85% casualty reduction. Add anti-radiation damage drugs (see the bottom of this article on new carbon nanotube based drugs that are 5000 times more effective.) Total 85-92% casualty reduction.

- A brick building provides better protection than does a brick veneer building, which is better than that of a frame building.- Multiple stories increase protection as well.- The interior of a one-story building reduces exposure by 50 percent.- A level below ground reduces exposure by 90 percent.- Additional levels provide more shielding and increase the overall effectiveness above and below ground.- The five-story building illustration, below, shows that the middle floors provide better shielding than the ground floor because fallout that covers the ground emits gamma radiation along with that on the exterior surfaces of the building.- Moving to a higher floor in the building increases the distance from the ground source but, at some point, increases exposure from the source on the rooftop.- The best option is to move to the center of the building away from the exterior walls (and below ground, if possible) or to a middle floor above ground.- Note how the position in the building and surroundings affect the percentage by which exposure is reduced in various locations.

Advancing technology means that weapons are getting more and more powerful and eventually more nations and groups will have access to nuclear weapons or more powerful weapons. It would foolish to assume that we must safely walk a tight rope without a safety net. A moderate increase in building costs will mean more survivable buildings that will save lives from severe weapons and warfare.

When carbon nanotubes are cheap after 2015 or so, then it will easy to increase buildings to 100-4000PSI strength while maintain most of the aesthetic look.

functionalized with additional hydrogen species, the composite materials could serve as radiation protection from secondary radiation events. Imparting nanotubes into the midplane or on the surface could serve as radiation protection or as protection against lightning strikes.

Lithium hydride is a popular shield material for nuclear power reactors, but is generally not useful for other functions. The graphite nanofiber materials heavily impregnated with hydrogen or any composite thereof may well represent a viable multifunctional component in future space structures. In this case study ofthe graphite nanofiber, hydrogen content is ~ 68% wt while in laboratory in single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) hydrogen storage has been achieved ~ 10% wt.

The drug is based on single-walled carbon nanotubes, hollow cylinders of pure carbon that are about as wide as a strand of DNA. To form NTH, Rice scientists coat nanotubes with two common food preservatives -- the antioxidant compounds butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) -- and derivatives of those compounds.

"The same properties that make BHA and BHT good food preservatives, namely their ability to scavenge free radicals, also make them good candidates for mitigating the biological affects that are induced through the initial ionizing radiation event," Tour said.

Affordable (for wide deployment) and better radiation shielding and far more effective drugs could greatly reduce the deaths from ionizing and fallout radiation.

Some interesting tidbits. The overpressure from the Nagasaki air blast peaked at 65 PSI for buildings on the ground.

A lot of the protection was based on crude materials like lumber and dirt. By looking to upgrade the survivability of our regular houses and office buildings now and in the future, we need materials that people are happy to live and work in. Graphene with hydrogen impregnation reinforcing polymers could provide protection with thinner material, so that it would not look like we are living in bunkers even when 4-6 inch thick wall might be reducing radiation by 16 times or more.

A team from the University of Tehran, competing in a contest sponsored by the American Concrete Institute, demonstrated several blocks of concretes with abnormally high compressive strengths between 50,000 and 60,000 PSI at 28 days. The blocks appeared to use an aggregate of steel fibres and quartz – a mineral with a compressive strength of 160,000 PSI, much higher than typical high-strength aggregates such as granite (15,000-20,000 PSI).

Polymer concrete is concrete which uses polymers to bind the aggregate. Polymer concrete can gain a lot of strength in a short amount of time. For example, a polymer mix may reach 5000 psi in only four hours. Polymer concrete is generally more expensive than conventional concretes. (May be used in regular wood and steel formwork)

Note that any higher construction costs are offset by lower maintenance costs and lower insurance for individuals and society. Monolithic domes can apply for home insurance discounts because of lower risks for fires and damage.

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